Uber, Deliveroo and Pimlico Plumbers have all been answering legal questions about the legitimacy of a business model that sees them, and other companies, claiming the people work for them are self-employed, so they don’t have to pay Employers’ National Insurance, pension, holidays, sick leave, etc., as their competitors do. At the outset, Taylor commented that there were areas into which he wasn’t tasked to delve (tax & National Insurance, for example), so it hasn’t, perhaps, been the free and open review that had been called for by many.

There are, however, several aspects that are unlikely to go down well with factions of the Conservative government. Speaking in May, Taylor said:

“As we encourage people to vote . . . to inform themselves of issues, to volunteer in their community, is it defensible to say that for eight or more hours a day they should accept being ignored, denied information, treated as mere cogs in a machine?”

That could easily be interpreted as a call to reverse moves by the Cameron Government to apply cumulative restrictions to the ability of trade unions to provide that voice. It could also be that Theresa May’s surprise decision to announce in November:

“…we will shortly publish our plans to reform corporate governance, including … proposals to ensure the voice of employees is heard in the boardroom.”

might actually come to fruition, though there has been precious little mention of the radical reforms of employment law mentioned in the run-up to the general election.

However, it also suggests that implementation of the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 (ICER) hasn’t had the impact that it could and should have had. Certainly, many trade union activists viewed ICER with suspicion, partly because merely informing and consulting can achieve relatively little without scope for negotiation. Similarly, some employers saw it as a way to prevent unions from getting access to their workplace. However, those opinions have been changing over time, as demonstrated by the TUC’s “Democracy in the Workplace” report from 2014. There is considerable evidence that employers that actively engage with their staff are more successful than those that don’t:

Many were calling for a simplification of the categories, preventing confusion over whether people are employees, workers or self-employed: instead, Taylor seems to be recommending that a further category is introduced, that of “Dependent Contractor”, something more than self-employed, clearly less than a worker, but that is presumably intended to level the playing field.

Quite how the Government will react to the findings is, frankly, anyone’s guess, especially with the level of distraction coming from Brexit, May’s increasingly slender majority, rumoured challenges for the Tory leadership (and, hence, the job of Prime Minister) and Labour apparently surging ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since the General Election, it’ll be a real surprise if they turn to this as a matter of urgency. But it is the response of Government to these findings that will determine whether or not they make a positive difference for employers and those they employ.

Instead, attention will again be drawn to Uber’s fortunes in the Employment Appeals Tribunal in September.

From where I’m sitting, one answer is in the hands of every employer; improve your working relationship with your staff and, in turn, make the business more productive and more profitable. That’s an area where I would certainly like to help.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the issues raised in this article, so please leave a comment or, if you’d like to discuss anything more directly, please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

In spite of political insistence that the economy is recovering, and has been for a good while, this week the BBC’s Economics Editor has predicted that wages are likely to stagnate for a good while longer.

That conclusion isn’t really a surprise, but it will be a disappointment for many given the extent to which pay has been eroded over recent years – this report from 3 years ago pointing out that real-terms pay is stuck in a time loop at 2004.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees was 9.4% (the gap has hardly changed over the last six years).

Indeed, if you look at the cumulative impacts of pay restraint under successive Governments, the 2008 economic crisis and the seemingly never ending austerity that has followed, some public sector workers may only have seen a real terms pay increase in their lifetime if they have managed to get a promotion – and many have only done so because inflation was so low in 2014/15:

…and that’s before you get into the debate about whether CPI, currently 2.6%, is a reasonable measure of the increased cost of living (most trade unions and many commentators prefer to use RPI, currently sitting at 3.5%, as it includes housing costs).

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787

Trade Unions face big new fines

“The number of working days lost are at historically low levels when looking at the long-run monthly time series back to the 1930s.”

Sneaking past the radar, under cover of Brexit, the Government is running a number of consultations, including ones around the Trade Union Act 2016 and Corporate Governance. The Corporate Governance review deadline has passed, so the gathered information is now being collated and interpreted, but other elements are still in play. The consultation that caught my eye was consultation on the Certification Officer’s enforcement powers. This will introduce significantly tighter rules on the election for senior positions, vetting of candidates and the management of political funds, with unions facing fines of up to £20,000 if they breach those rules.

As is often the case, there’s a stick for when things go wrong, but no carrot to encourage a more positive approach to be deployed. The consultation in process doesn’t seem to be leveling the playing field so much as presenting another set of hurdles for unions to jump in order to be effective in representing the voices of their members.

Only last November Theresa May stated “…we will shortly publish our plans to reform corporate governance, including … proposals to ensure the voice of employees is heard in the boardroom.” at the CBI Conference. She backtracked pretty quickly, and the concept that staff have a valid (essential?) voice in the successful governance of businesses and charities was diluted in the document that was published, but it was still there. There is, therefore, an opportunity for employers to provide a channel for that voice.

And all of this comes at a time when strikes are at close to their recorded low – to quote from the Office of National Statistics report UK Labour Market: Mar 2017:

“The number of working days lost are at historically low levels when looking at the long-run monthly time series back to the 1930s.”

Yet, while CEOs across the land still proclaim their staff to be their biggest asset, most still decline to draw on staff knowledge of the business, the problems it faces and many possible solutions.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

The French now have an absolute right NOT to check their e-mail out of hours, but why do people do it in the first place? Is a law necessary? And how much of it comes as an expectation of the employer, and how much is self-inflicted?

I suspect there may be a PhD in accurately finding the answer to these questions, but few employment contracts demand that you are available and responding 24 hours a day and for most people the actual expectation is that they work their normal contract hours, plus give a bit of flexibility when they need to get something done. It’s interesting that France has felt the need to protect people from the pressure (perhaps to protect them from themselves?) by introducing a law that guarantees the right not to check e-mail when you’re not working.

In the days of paper correspondence, people would expect a response to their communication perhaps within the week, but after 5 or 6 days was often the best that could be achieved once everything was balanced into the diary. That steadily changed as electronic communication came to the fore.

The step changes in expectation, however, came with the rise of the laptop and the BlackBerry. While the traditional BlackBerry is an endangered species, teetering on the verge of extinction, more and more people are carrying a smart phone on which they can not only send and receive e-mail, but they can browse the internet, log into cloud drives, even edit documents.

I’ve had colleagues in the past who expected instant responses to their e-mails – one reportedly started criticising my lack of response because I hadn’t replied within 2 hours of them e-mailing me. Whether or not that was true, the fact that someone was prepared to relay it indicates how believable it is in the modern world of work that expectations have become so utterly and completely unreasonable.

This whole situation has become exacerbated by the increasing use of Twitter and other social media by businesses looking to communicate with their customers and clients. Twitter has brought the expectation of instant responses, or at least within a few minutes, to the extent that some staff are now being tasked with responding to all Tweets within very short timescales, while there has been a growth in suppliers offering social media management services so you can outsource the “instant” responses and focus on more considered answers to legitimate questions.

It is inevitable that this focus on more and more rapid response should spill into people feeling they’re not doing their job properly if they don’t meet the timescales. That, combined with increasing presenteeism, means people are often tempted into having a quick check of their work e-mail once they get home. Or just before they go to bed. Or as soon as they wake up in the morning. Or while they’re SUPPOSED to be off work ill. This last one is particularly concerning as the increased stress will undoubtedly delay their recovery, while they are unlikely to get any thanks or recognition from their employer for having done so. Indeed, a responsible employer should be seeking to stop such behaviour, as has been reported on the parts of Volkswagen, Daimler, Axa and other companies.

To highlight the folly of this lifestyle change, keep an eye out for more information about Work Your Proper Hours Day, an annual event instigated 13 years ago. Given the amount of unpaid overtime you probably work, including checking your e-mails out of hours, WYPHD falls on the day each year when you (as an average worker) actually start to get paid for the work you do. And in 2015 people in the UK worked £31.5 billion worth of hours without getting paid a penny. This year it falls on Friday 24th February.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787

The long and the short of it is that nothing will change immediately – the impact of European case law remains unchanged, albeit the vast, vast majority of case law originates through the UK’s Employment Tribunal system (primarily at EAT and Court of Appeal).

EU Directives on Employment Law are implemented through enactment into UK Legislation, usually by Regulation, less frequently by primary legislation. In this respect, many of the laws that have originated from the EU have become workplace norms (e.g. protection of fixed-term workers and part-time workers).

There is a risk that more recent and less accepted legislation may be under pressure to be repealed (e.g. Regulations on Agency Workers). There may also be changes over time in relation to the calculation of holiday pay and accrual of annual leave during sickness absence.

No doubt a surprise to many, there are various aspects of Employment Law where the UK provides greater than that stipulated by EU Regulations. This covers holiday rights, protection against discrimination, TUPE (which covers service provision transfer in the UK, unlike elsewhere in Europe), etc.

That said, companies working throughout Europe and currently depending on UK laws to meet the requirements for a European Works Council may need to review their arrangements.

What about the rights of EU Nationals to work in the UK? Well, it’s again difficult to say as yet, but special permissions may be needed to work here in future, perhaps with sponsorship, as is the case for non-EU nationals, but in the meantime, EU nationals working here are entitled to stay and continue working. The main protagonists on the Leave side made contradictory statements, so it is difficult to tell what may change, though Theresa May stated a desire to clarify this point quickly, while Nicola Sturgeon has moved to say their position is secure in Scotland.

But what will happen if there are non-UK nationals applying for jobs now? If they are employed, they may be forced to leave in a year or two’s time, but NOT employing them because of that would currently be illegal discrimination.

The UK currently already has a points based system for non-EU nationals which COULD be extended, at least for skilled workers, though Tier 3 (unskilled workers) would need to be reactivated. There hasn’t been a need for non-EU unskilled workers because that gap has been filled from within the EU, but that source is clearly likely to dry up as/when the UK withdraws from the Single Market. If employers have a need for unskilled workers that they can’t meet from domestic recruitment, this needs to be flagged up with the Government.